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Officials Haul Off 'Cape Cod Bear' In Brookline

Update at 2:45 p.m.: State environmental officials have determined that the black bear captured in Brookline Tuesday (see original post below) is the same bear that became a local celebrity as it wandered around Cape Cod weeks ago.

After first appearing on Cape Cod over Memorial Day Weekend, officials captured the bear in Wellfleet on June 11 and transported it off the Cape. After its Brookline capture Tuesday, officials are now transporting the animal "to a remote location in western Massachusetts."

As the Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs added in a release:

Recent sightings of black bears have been reported in the following towns of Dedham, Mendon, Medway, Medfield, Needham, Walpole, and Brookline. Officials cannot confirm that all sightings are the same bear.

And while the state said that the "core range of the bear population in Massachusetts" is western and central Massachusetts, "[t]he black bear population has been slowly growing and expanding its range into eastern and southeastern Massachusetts."

Original post:

Environmental officials captured and are relocating a black bear that had climbed up a pine tree on Brookline's Pine Road.

(Brookline Police Department, via Twitter)
(Brookline Police Department, via Twitter)

The bear was some 50 feet up in the tree when it was shot with a tranquilizer dart. It then fell to the ground in front of a crowd of onlookers. Brookline Police say the bear is OK.

The environmental officials are now relocating the bear to western Massachusetts, according to the Boston Globe. The Globe adds that the bear is a male that "has been captured and relocated by wildlife officials twice in the past," according to officials.

Portions of Brookline's Hammond Street were closed as officials moved in on the bear.

It's the region's latest wildlife-in-the-suburbs encounter. Another bear was spotted in Needham and Newton on Monday. Also Monday, a moose was seen in Wellesley, according to Wicked Local Wellesley.

Of course, those sightings followed a black bear wandering throughout Cape Cod for weeks.

And, like the Cape Cod Bear, the Brookline Bear is on Twitter.

This program aired on June 26, 2012. The audio for this program is not available.

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